[SOLVED] How to indicate the presence of wildcards without specifying it in the search string itself?

How to indicate the presence of wildcards without specifying it in the search string itself?

With regards to using XML, what is the most efficient and/or elegant way of indicating the presence of wildcards (Asterisk and Question Mark) in a search string without specifying it in the string itself?

For example, this is invalid:

<searchString>
   <searchFor>*cat??</searchFor>
</searchString>

and this is valid:

<searchString>
   <searchFor>cat</searchFor>
   <wildcards>
      <asterisk>
         <offset>0</offset>
      </asterisk>
      <questionMark>
         <offset>3</offset>
         <count>2</count>
      </questionMark>
   </wildcards>
</searchString>

Note that there is also a problem with the valid example above which is unable to specify the search string *??cat where two different types of wildcard characters occur with the same offset value. This must be taken care of as well.

Solution

You could use:

<searchString>
    <asterisk/>
    <questionMark/>
    <questionMark/>
    <text>cat</text>
</searchString>

which resolves the final problem, and would be simple to transform to the full query string when you need it.